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Phorusrhacos
Phorusrhacos, also known as the Terror Bird, was a genus of flightless carnivorous birds that lived in Patagonia, containing the single species Phorusrhacos longissimus. It belongs to the family Phorusrachidae. Their closet living relatives are seriema birds. However It was much larger than the seriemas. These fierce birds most likely lived in woodlands and grasslands that covered South America at the time. Facts Among the bones found in the stratum of the Santa Cruz Formation (now considered as mainly of mid-Miocene date) was the piece of mandible which Florentino Ameghino (1887) at first described it as that of an edentate mammal. In 1891, it was recognized to be a bird. Many more remains have been found from several localities in the Santa Cruz Province, of Argentina. These creatures evolved when South America was an isolated continent. But when it got closer and closer to North American, the mammals, the Sabre–Tooth Cats, out-competed the birds as top predators of South America. Phorusrhacos stood around 3 meters (10 feet) tall and weighed approximately 131.6 kilograms (290 Ibs). It was nicknamed the "Terror Bird" for obvious reasons: it was one of the largest carnivorous birds to have ever existed, it could tackle fast prey, which was then killed with the massive beak. It ate large mammals and carrion. It is thought that the bird grasped small prey with its beak and smashed it to the ground repeatedly like modern birds, the seriemas. However for larger prey it most likely used the hook on its beak as a spike to jab at the creature and bleed it out. It had an enormous skull up to sixty centimeters long, armed with a powerful, hook-tipped beak. Despite these similarities to modern birds of prey, it is believed to be a separate branch of the bird family. These birds could gobble down huge chunks of flesh, bone, and hide. South America wasn’t the only place these Terror Birds were doing well. Once the land bridge opened to North America, they were one of the few creatures to spread north successfully. While the Terror Birds in South America ate Smilodon leftovers, their cousins were running riot in Texas and Florida. Phorusrhacus only died out just before modern human appeared. Roughly 400,000 years ago, the Phorusrhacids died out. The only exception was Titanis, which had migrated to North America instead, and survived until 15,000 years instead in hard to reach places such as modern Florida. It is hard to say why these impressive creatures died out, but most likely it was due to climate change (the start of Ice Age). The coincidental timing of the creation of the Panama land bridge and the extinction of Phorusrachids made the creators of "Walking with beasts" to believe that the Phorusrachids were out competed by Smilodons and other mammals. However this has been disproved by recent scientific finds. It's closest living relatives are the much smaller seriemas. In Walking With... Series ''Walking with Beasts Saber Tooth In the episode they chased a ''Smilodon cub, ate an adult Smilodons' left-overs, as well as a corpse of one of the brothers, killed after a battle for the pride by Half-Tooth. In the documentary one Smilodon scared three terror birds and saved a cub from two terror birds. Again, this was disproved by recent scientific finds. Appearances in Other Media ''Prehistoric Park'' Read more at the Prehistoric Park Wiki The Terror Bird appears again in Prehistoric Park as a resident in episode 4. It is also known for escaping from it's enclosure by digging under the fences. ''Primeval'' Read more at the Primeval Wiki In Primeval 'episode 3x06, where they harassed Danny Quinn and his comrades until Danny tricked them into going back through the time anomaly. However these terror birds are actually ''Titanis not Phorusrachos. (Titanis has also appeared in '''P:NW.) Category:Sabre Tooth animals Category:Cenozoic animals Category:Miocene animals Category:Animals from South America Category:Animals Category:Chordates Category:Vertebrates Category:Carnivores Category:Solitary animals